The Sweet Taste of Kismet
by crackers4jenn
Summary: Mason tells of his encounter with The Slayer.


_Once upon a time ago, in a land not so far away since public transportation exists everywhere these days, like a vehicular plague on our towns and cities, a young, dashingly handsome, wily, quick-witted, strapping fellow of a man was thrust into an existence that, not by any stretch of the imagination, would be considered glamorous. Uh, rich night life, bountiful amounts of pliable women, and an exotic pharmacopoeias selection aside, that is, of course.  
_

Under a fluorescent glow advertising 24-hour waffle service, George stares. "Right, because life's a bowl of really fucked up drugs, is that how it goes, Mason?"

Genuinely clueless, Mason says back, "I don't know what you're saying."

"You've never heard the saying 'life is a bowl full of cherries'?"

In answer, he blinks.

"What century did you grow up in? Wait, the more important question: how many brain cells have you somehow managed to not nuke yet? Two? Three? Two and three quarters?"

Mason finally finds words again. "But it doesn't make any sense. How is life a bowl full of cherries?" Ever the eternal seeker of knowledge, that Mason.

"How should I know? It's a saying. Like, _life is like a box full of chocolates_--"

"What the fuck?!" he says, a response admittedly disproportionate to the preceding remark. Maybe it's the drugs circulating through his body in slow, excruciating detail, since being dead kind of fucks up your circulatory system, who knows, maybe it's just Mason's special brand of intelligence, either way, he's freaking out. And over a couple of stupid food-as-applied-to-life similes made popular by movies, too.

George pokes at a piece of sausage with a maple syrup-covered fork. "Why are you all... bug-eyed?" she asks, because she too is a seeker of knowledge. A seeker who seeks to know things about the sober to non-sober relationship that clouds around Mason at all times.

Mason makes an effort to swallow, calming himself. He's starting to sweat. "Nothing. No reason. I'm not. Are you sure? Fuck off." Mason laughs. The high-pitched, barking quality to it might be hysteria. Then again, it might just be the drugs.

"Georgia," Daisy sighs, standing at the brunt of their table with a plate of food in her hand. That's a surprise. No, not her sudden appearance; the fact that she carried her own food over to the table. "What have you done to Mason?"

"Nothing! Why does everybody always think I _do_ things? Maybe Mason just fucked himself up!"

Daisy sighs, rolls her eyes, and sits down next to George, pushing her towards the closed in side of the booth. Mason, in an attempt to appear either sane or sober, wipes the sweat off his face, still bug-eyed, and takes a deep, satisfying swig of George's orange juice.

"C'mon!" George yells in disgust, because he's probably got, like, a billion drug-infested germs populating the inside of his mouth. "Jesus Christ, Mason."

He gulps another swallow down, dabs the spilt over pulp off the side of his mouth, and sets the near empty glass next to her plate again.

"Like I'm gonna drink outta that after your disease-infected lips slathered all over it. I'll probably contract syphilis. Like I _need_ syphilis."

Daisy sighs a weary sigh. "I can tell already, it's going to be _that_ kind of day. Lovely. Just wonderful. I wanted to start the morning off fresh, but with you two bickering..."

Rube shows up with his own plate of food, only he's got that perpetual rainy day, gloomy frown on his face that makes him seem the consonant paternal part of their group. Roxy, in uniform, is at his side.

"There's bickering?" Rube wonders. "The day hasn't even started yet, what's there to bicker about? I don't understand premature bickering."

"There better not be any bickering," Roxy says, pushing her way into the already filled side of George and Daisy. Rube gets in with Mason after only a moment's reluctance.

"I swear to you," Roxy says, "if I hear any of that first grade squabbling shit, I'm gonna shoot one of you mother fuckers in the mother fucking foot, do you understand? I am not in the mood."

"Ya think?" George snarks, but under her breath, because while the need to be a wise ass is there, the need to have her foot not be shot at exists as well.

_Once upon a time ago, in a land that wasn't so far away, thanks to the generous to fair amounts of public transportation littering this fine Nation--_

"What the fuck is this?" Roxy says, pointing at Mason with a wielded fork. "What is that? Who's he talking to?"

George fills in, "He says he met a Slayer before. Hence the storytelling."

"Mason never met anybody before. Boy's like a tragic, messed up retard that way, like something you hear about in the news. He makes shit up all the time."

"I do not!" Mason fends for himself, but it's got that pleading tone of swelling desperation to it that makes it hard to believe. Plus, he totally does always make shit up.

"Oh yeah? Last week you were telling everybody how you and Hendrix used to get high together. How'd that one go again?"

"Fuck off," Mason suggests.

Roxy snorts, her point made, and continues stabbing at her scrambled eggs with a violence that they probably don't deserve.

_The dashing, strapping young lad was a crusader of justice, one dealt a tragic, early death in life so that he may do to others as fate did unto him. Minus a hand-drill._

_Amidst the darkness, destiny brought him, along with a Post-It note and scribbled E.T.D. in hand, to the residual resting ground of those who have, to put it politely, snuffed it. Dead, basically. Dead people, buried underground. Buried because they died horrible, gruesome--_

"We know what a cemetery is, you clown," Roxy growls.

Mason glares, but begins again, anyway.

_It was upon a coincidence that the vampire Slayer just so happened to be, uh, vampire slayering at the same time as our Hero. Hers, too, was a duty shaped by destiny, by kismet and fortune and a sacred, noble obligation. Also, she was blonde. Very, very compact. Curiously strong, come to think of it. Like a mini little super hero, but without the metropolis in which to protect._

Roxy stood up. "I stay here any longer, I'll start shooting. You think I wanna be the stereotypical angry black woman that starts shooting people up inside Der Waffle House because he can't sit here and eat like a normal person without saying some stupid shit?" She drops change on the table to cover the cost of her meal and walks away.

"Jesus," Mason says, once she's gone. "I don't understand how someone so small can be so angry all the time."

Rube pokes at his own food. The hash is burnt, the eggs are watery. It's no good. "You're an annoying fuck-up with no ability to reflect upon yourself or those around you. You talk too much, you have appalling habits that, quite frankly, offend me on every level. You're a gnat."

Mason frowns. "But why does Roxy not like me?"

Rube solemnly shakes his head, pondering at his plate. "Why do I bother? I don't know why I even bother."

_Separately, as two differing entities, they entered the graveyard, each on a mission beyond their control and totally and completely out of their hands. And it was in this instant that they happened upon one another. The girl gasp, the Hero stood his ground, ready to catch her should she swoon. He hadn't, at that time, known of her origins, as it was. Needless to say, she did not faint, but rather punched him in the face._

_"Take that, scoundrel!" the Slayer shouted._

_The hero recovered in an instant, unharmed._

"Bullshit." George calls his bluff. "You cry when you stub your toe."

"Do not!" is his handy, remarkably manly defense again. "And besides, I have very sensitive feeting."

_It took only a moment to clear the lingering confusion, and as it turned out, they were on the same side. They were as one. Together they bound through the graveyard, very fast, very focused. The Hero looking for his Post-It note victim, the Slayer protecting the town from evil. Two very alike missions._

_It happened at once. A vampire erupted from below ground, through soil and grass and decorative plaque alike. Once freed, it leapt at the Hero, but he pivoted out of the way in a spectacularly amazing movement. The Slayer had broken a tree branch and whittled a stake, which she was to use on the vampire. It sprang at her, a monster with a hungry, single-minded purpose. Its fangs glistening in the moonlight, sharp and dripping with blood of the innocent. The Hero bound forward. The Slayer fell to the foliage, attacked. Just when all looked lost, the Hero swooped in and rendered the vampire to dust._

"That can't be true," George gapes. There's a logic in Mason's story that doesn't quite have its dots fully connected. "No way can that be true. Rube, tell him it's not true."

Rube sighs, his food pushed aside. "Truth's a tricky thing, Peanut. You contradict truth, you're upsetting the basic foundation that it lies therein."

Daisy slides easily back into the conversation, smiling a smile that is somehow both earnest and patronizing at the same time. "Oh, he's telling the truth, Georgia. I'm not saying I believe our little Mason here and his encounter with the Slayer, but. Vampires do exist. I once," she begins, somewhat imploringly, "had an affair with one. Of course, I didn't know it at the time, but it does make for peculiar story-telling now, doesn't it?"

George blinks. "How did I not know this? How is this not on EVERY news channel?"

"Monster movies," Daisy answers, simple enough.

"What?"

"Where do you think they originated?"

"I don't know, _really insane_ people's minds?"

"Oh, Georgia. You can be so naive sometimes."

"Basic rule of thumb," Rube says, though merely for educational purposes, not out of actual interest in joining or adding to the conversation. "There's no limit to the things that go bump in the night. The monster's of our worst nightmares. They're out there, believe me. That and more."

"Oh, great! I'm gonna be freaked out for the rest of my natural born—I'm gonna be freaked out forever!"

"Alright, alright now," Mason whines. "You're taking away from my story! With your shocking amounts of disbelief."

_And it was with both appreciation and a sparkle in her brown flecked eyes that the Slayer graciously gave thanks. With tongue._

_Upon a coincidence that neither saw coming, the Slayer was in fact the B. Summers as to whose soul the Hero was destined to collect. The kiss would be her last. A fucking unbelievable way to be offed._


End file.
